What kind of man is David Cameron? It is strange to be asking this question of someone who has been leader of the Tory party for 10 years, Prime Minister for more than five, and about whom there exists a colossal amount of information.

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It is true he is almost unthinkingly ambitious (at 14 he declared without having shown much interest in politics that he was going to be Prime Minister), and capable of ruthlessness. We saw how at Prime Minister’s Questions he loved to play Flashman to poor, heavy-footed Ed Miliband. But if he knows how to be shitty, he is not a shit. On the contrary, his nature is sunny and well-meaning. I even found myself reinterpreting some words of congratulation he had uttered after I had delivered a eulogy at a friend’s memorial service in 2007 at which he was present. He twice complimented me, which seemed excessive. I assumed then that he was trying to oil up to a journalist, but now I wonder whether he wasn’t going out of his way to be kind to a stranger, offering words of reassurance to someone plainly exhausted by making a testing speech that was probably not particularly good.

Of course, we should never be starry-eyed about the people who rule us, but I submit the proposition that, his sense of entitlement and flashes of ruthlessness notwithstanding, Cameron is unusually decent for a leading politician, as well not unpardonably (in view of his considerable gifts) confident.

With the elegance and self-assurance of one of those natural cricketers at school capable of scoring a hundred without breaking sweat, he has eased his way forward through life apparently effortlessly. There were sadnesses, of course: his father’s disability, and later, and much more tragic, the serious illness and death of his first child, Ivan. But the early misfortune was mitigated by his father’s good cheer and lack of self-pity; and the latter, when it came, could be dealt with because he was such a well-balanced and grounded person.

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Most of us grow tougher as we get older, and doubtless David Cameron has done so, but I don’t think this unguarded benevolence has left him. If he were a dog he would be an enthusiastic Labrador, bounding up to strangers with automatic good will and lack of suspicion, his tongue lolling out ready to bestow a lick, and reluctant to bare his teeth even when provoked. (He does, however, bear unLabrador-like grudges. Two prominent Tory MPs have told me that he has not spoken to them since being, in his view, crossed by them.) There is also an innate languor that can make it difficult for him to work up his energy levels.

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As I write, David Cameron is basking in the sun. He has won the first Tory majority since 1992. The Labour party has turned in on itself. His only plausable rival, Boris Johnson, is marginalised and diminished. So confident is the Prime Minister that he made a centre-ground, even left-leaning, speech at the Tory party conference that might have tumbled from the lips of Tony Blair. In it he reached out rhetorically to the poor and dispossessed. (There was, however, one surprisingly tough-sounding passage about Islamic extremism in Britain that was largely ignored.) Things have never looked so good for our suave, sleek, soft Prime Minister who has filled out a bit, and looks ever more authentically Tory — master of all he surveys.

But there are once-in-a-generation issues in politics that cannot be dodged or massaged away by efficient despatchers of business and consensus-seekers. Europe is one of them. It looms like an iceberg in front of David Cameron and his administration. I am not at all sure he has any idea of what is coming his way.

He says he is ‘a great believer that you have got to do things properly and make sure you behave appropriately’.

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Is this still the political epitaph he would like? Cameron shoots back a quick: ‘Yes, I think it is very important.’

So rather than an ‘ism’ or any great political mission, he would be content with a perhaps slightly old-fashioned sense that generally he handled events as well as he could. It is one of the curiosities of Cameron that while he is so often described as ‘a moderniser’, he actually harks back to a much earlier tradition of political leadership.

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He declares that the general election was a ‘victory for Tory modernisation’ because he won votes from all manner of parties. ‘It demonstrated that you don’t have to keep tacking to the right to win votes — and, indeed, actually it’s a self-destroying ordinance if you do.’

Cameron says he is particularly proud of gay marriage, labelling it a ‘big achievement’, and talks with pride about how he still gets ‘a regular stream’ of letters. ‘As people go to get hitched, they send me a nice letter saying thank you very much.’ He is convinced that opposition to it is almost gone, remarking with great satisfaction that ‘even Nigel Farage is now in favour of gay marriage as far as I can see’. This is a change of emphasis: when he listed his proudest achievements during the Lynton Crosby-run election campaign, gay marriage didn’t feature. What a difference a majority makes.

Changing the Conservative party is something that still matters to Cameron: he wants his ‘one nation’ politics to define Conservatism even after he’s stepped down as leader. This is why he was so pleased by the speeches of his two most likely successors at Tory conference, George Osborne and Boris Johnson. ‘What surprised me, in a very positive way, was that the tone, message and overall feel of those speeches were absolutely similar. Very much that the Conservative party should be strong in the centre ground, a compassionate force.’ He says that it made him think that ‘this party really has changed in a good way. A traditionally Conservative way of responding to events and things going on in our society to make sure it is still doing a proper job.’

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Ultimately, the most surprising development in British politics this year was not Cameron’s majority but Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader. Cameron admits that he ‘did not see it coming at all’. He seems genuinely puzzled — ‘I thought it was so obvious why they lost the election’ that they would plump for a ‘more sensible centre–left approach’ — but likes to credit himself with a small role in Labour’s lurch to the left. ‘One of my longstanding friends and supporters said that because the Conservatives have taken the sensible centre ground, we have left Labour with so little to camp on that they have done that classic reaction of heading off into the hills.’

No, he’s not a model. I didn’t like NAFTA [NAFTA was signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1993, but Reagan first proposed a ”North American accord” in a 1979 speech, and a precursor to NAFTA was signed by the U.S. and Canada in 1988.], I didn’t like some of the economic policies. But he was a man that I respected and liked, and he liked me.

But he also could broach moderates, conservatives, Democrats.

He did. Well, he was a Democrat with a liberal bent as a younger man. And then he became a conservative Republican. He had a great way about him. A great sense of dignity. And he was a wonderful father for the country in a sense. He had a great feel for what the country represents.

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If you’re in this for the long haul, do you have to be more diplomatic in the media?

A little bit. A little more selective, I would say, more than diplomatic. And I’m very capable of doing that.

You’re friends with the WWE’s Vince McMahon. Critics have said your campaign is like pro wrestling — it’s just theatrics.

One of the reasons I tell people about my level of intelligence — like, for instance, I had an uncle, Dr. John Trump, who was at MIT, like totally brilliant, became a professor at MIT — is when you’re a Republican conservative, you have to build up your credentials a little bit. But I can pivot any way. I can be a very elegant, highly refined person, I can be a very politically correct person where I would never ever say anything that’s even slightly over the edge, or I can be who I want to be. It’s very time-consuming to be politically correct. And I don’t have the time. It’s also very boring to be politically correct. Right? You wouldn’t be here if I was totally politically correct.

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Obviously, the power of your celebrity and brand means something.

If I weren’t a successful person, it wouldn’t work as well. Voters have great confidence in me because I really have been successful. I have an income of over $400 million a year. I don’t need anybody’s money. I was offered $5 million last week by a lobbyist to put in the campaign. I said, ”No, I don’t need it.” He said, ”What do you mean, ‘I don’t need it?’ ” I said I don’t need it. This is a guy that I know well, a good lobbyist, a tough cookie. He’s not giving to me because he thinks I have the most beautiful hair he’s ever seen. He’s giving to me because when he has one of his companies in trouble or needs something, they want to call me and say, ”Hey, Don, how you doing? Remember me?” I don’t need that stuff. Whereas Jeb Bush, with $114 million that he raised [so far this year], and Hillary with the $60 million [CBS News reports she raised $47 million in the campaign’s first quarter] and everyone else with the money they raised, they’re going to be called upon, and they’re going to have to do those things like little puppets. So people do respect that about me. I don’t need it.

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These campaigns get dirty and ugly. Would you ever use Karl Rove?

No. Is he a friend of yours?

No, but he’s been a godfather of elections for the GOP.

What happened is Karl Rove in the last cycle spent $436 million, and he didn’t win one race. And on election evening [when he challenged Fox News’ Obama victory prediction], he had a bad night. The result was wrong! I guess you’re using that name as an example. I’ve got a lot of people against me. And in a way, it emboldens me. I don’t like it, but it emboldens me. I mean, Fox has not been nice to me, in my opinion. Not just at the debate. You see some of these pundits get on, and they don’t know what they’re talking about. They’ve been predicting my doom for a year.

The most in-demand person on the planet has gone into hold-all-my-calls mode for nearly two hours to sit down with FORBES and tackle, piece by piece, a subject that he cares about to the depths of his soul: how much FORBES says he’s worth. Since The Forbes 400 list of richest Americans debuted in 1982, the dynamism of the U.S. economy and the hand of the grim reaper have resulted in exactly 1,538 people making the cut at one time or another. Of those 1,538 tycoons, not one has been more fixated with his or her net worth estimate on a year-in, year-out basis than Donald J. Trump.

Trump’s valuation this year holds extra importance, of course, due to his audacious second act: his highly unlikely–but no longer inconceivable–path to the presidency.

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“I’m running for President,” says Trump. “I’m worth much more than you have me down [for]. I don’t look good, to be honest. I mean, I look better if I’m worth $10 billion than if I’m worth $4 billion.”

To The Forbes 400 crowd, perhaps. But when pushed, even Trump concedes that, for voters, the difference between $4 billion and $10 billion is as abstractly irrelevant as a star that’s either 4 billion or 10 billion light-years away. Ultimately, Trump’s beef with our numbers is driven by Trump: how his peers view him and, more acutely, how he views himself. It always has been. The paradoxical Trump that now transfixes American political culture is the same one that The Forbes 400 has been dancing with for 33 years. And the history of his net worth fixation opens windows into Trump the entrepreneur, the candidate and the person.

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Colleagues of Steve Jobs famously described his “reality-distortion field”–his ability to see what he wanted to see and then will the delusion into truth. Way before that another master capitalist, Andrew Carnegie, declared that “all riches, and all material things that anyone acquires through self-effort, begin in the form of a clear, concise mental picture of the thing one seeks.”

Trump has a healthy dose of this gene. […] “Even my own feelings affect my value to myself,” he said. When asked to specify, he described it as “my general attitude at the time that the question may be asked.” And if that general attitude is negative? “You wouldn’t tell a reporter you’re doing poorly.”

If my grandfather was here right now, he would not let me back down. I dunno what I fittin’ to lose after this. It don’t matter, though, because it’s not about me. It’s about ideas. New ideas. People that believe in truth. And yes, as you probably could’ve guessed by this moment, I have decided in 2020 to run for president.